Users of Facebook will know there are thousands of ‘groups’ you can join, for everything from political parties to favourite bands or daft ‘just for fun’ stuff that often makes no sense to the uninitiated. The group pages show news, pictures and videos relating to the topic, and members can make friends with one another and take part in discussion forums. Membership of a group also shows up on your personal profile page, so even if you’re not that interested in getting involved, joining is still a bit like wearing a badge.
Once such group seems to be The word "gay" is not a synonym for "stupid", which currently has an impressive 78,232 members, and, more alarmingly, 28 ‘Officers’ and 14 ‘Admins’. On one level, the group simply expresses frustration with the use of the word gay as a term of disparagement. Actually, I don’t think this usage is quite synonymous with ‘stupid’ – more like ‘naff’ or ‘lame’, but that’s by the bye. The group’s general attitude wavers between pedantry and prudery, and is not very attractive, but that’s not important either – for a critique of this kind of censoriousness, see Censoring students at Oxford? That is so gay, by Maria Grasso.
What’s really interesting about the group is the enormous, 925-word preamble. Before doing anything else, visitors are told: ‘**STOP AND READ ALL OF THIS FIRST**’ What follows is a pre-emptive rebuttal of possible objections of various kinds, referring people to earlier discussion threads about censorship and the idea that language simply evolves, for example. To be fair, some of the points made are well-argued, but they are hardly the last word on the subject, as is implied. This preamble is followed by ‘Recent news’, which is really more of the same, but with added warnings against advertising and unsolicited friendship requests. The group’s ‘wall’ – a general posting area found on all Facebook pages – has been disabled too. Whatever else it is, this group is not gay. ‘Frigid’ might be a more apt insult.
Ultimately it is not surprising that a group set up to police language should end up trying to police debate about policing language. No doubt our choice of words reflects how we look at the world, and to some extent our political views, and it is fair enough to draw attention to it – though the connection between the new use of the word gay and prejudice against homosexual men and women is tenuous to say the least. More importantly, the attempt to stamp out particular words or their particular usage betrays a simplistic understanding of how the process works. The redefinition of words is a side effect of political debate and cultural production - books and films are rather more influential than speech codes. It isn’t established by edict, and the self-consciousness generated by this approach is anathema to intellectual freedom and good humour. There can be no better illustration of that than this Facebook group.
Dolan Cummings
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Another good example of the censorious tendencies of the online community is this group which aims to get the BNP banned from Facebook: http://oxford.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4242699766&ref=nf
The argument that the BNP violates Facebook terms and conditions is pretty water-tight, however, which illustrates that speech certainly isn't free on the site.
I do wonder how long it will take for so-called progressives to realise that trying to stifle and silence the hard right is ultimately counter-productive.
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